BT Library

Nineteenth Amendment

1920. This Constitutional Amendment instituted nationwide woman suffrage, prohibiting the United States or state governments from denying or abridging citizens' right to vote “on account of sex.” It culminated the national suffragist movement begun in 1848 by the Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York. Supported by organized labor and prohibitionists, the National Association for Woman Suffrage of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and the American Woman Suffrage Association of Henry Ward Beecher,* Lucy Stone, and Julia Ward Howe* crusaded after 1869, merging in 1890 as the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Carrie C. Catt, Anna H. Shaw, and Alice Paul pressed the Amendment through Congress (1919) exactly as written by Susan Anthony when first submitted in 1878. Voting patterns remained substantially unchanged after passage.